DAILY READINGS & REFLECTION

Friday of the Twenty-sixth week in Ordinary Time (October 4)

"He who hears you hears me"

GOSPEL

Luke 10:13-16

13 "Woe to you, Chorazin! woe to you, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14 But it shall be more tolerable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. 15 And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. 16 "He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me."

The Gospel of the Lord
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REFLECTION

Daily Quote from the early church fathers: Christ speaks through the disciples, by Cyril of Alexandria (376-444 AD)

"Christ gives those who love instruction the assurance that whatever is said concerning him by the holy apostles or evangelists is to be received necessarily without any doubt and to be crowned with the words of truth. He who hears them, hears Christ. For the blessed Paul also said, 'You desire proof that Christ is speaking in me' (2 Corinthians 13:3). Christ himself somewhere also said to the holy disciples, 'For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaks in you' (Matthew 10:20). Christ speaks in them by the consubstantial Spirit. If it is true, and plainly it is, that they speak by Christ, how can they err? He affirms that he who does not hear them, does not hear Christ, and that he who rejects them rejects Christ, and with him the Father."

(excerpt from COMMENTARY ON LUKE, HOMILY 63)
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FIRST READING

Baruch 1:15-22

15 And you will say, 'To the Lord our God is justice, but to us is confusion of our face, just as it is this day for all of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem 16 even for our kings, and our leaders, and our priests, and our prophets, and our fathers 17 We have sinned before the Lord our God and we have not believed, lacking confidence in him 18 And we have not been submissive to him, and we have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God, so as to walk in his commandments, which he has given to us 19 From the day that he led our fathers out of the land of Egypt, even to this day, we were unfaithful to the Lord our God, and, having been scattered, we fell away. We did not listen to his voice 20 And we joined ourselves to many evils and to the curses which the Lord established through Moses, his servant, who led our fathers out of the land of Egypt, to give us a land flowing with milk and honey, just as it is in the present day 21 And we have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God, according to all the words of the prophets whom he sent to us 22 And we have gone astray, each one after the inclinations of his own malignant heart, serving strange gods and doing evil before the eyes of the Lord our God
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RESPONSORIAL PSALM

PSALM 78(79):1-2, 3-5, 8, 9

Response: For the glory of your name, O Lord, deliver us.

O God, the nations have come into your inheritance;
they have defiled your holy temple,
they have laid Jerusalem in ruins.
They have given the corpses of your servants
as food to the birds of heaven,
the flesh of your faithful ones to the beasts of the earth.

R. For the glory of your name, O Lord, deliver us.

They have poured out their blood like water
round about Jerusalem,
and there is no one to bury them.
We have become the reproach of our neighbors,
the scorn and derision of those around us.
O LORD, how long? Will you be angry forever?
Will your jealousy burn like fire?

R. For the glory of your name, O Lord, deliver us.

Remember not against us the iniquities of the past;
may your compassion quickly come to us,
for we are brought very low.

R. For the glory of your name, O Lord, deliver us.

Help us, O God our savior,
because of the glory of your name;
Deliver us and pardon our sins
for your name's sake.

R. For the glory of your name, O Lord, deliver us.
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Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)
The Revised Standard Version of the Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1965, 1966 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.